Chapter 7. Two Wings to Fly: Prayer & Meditation

Our prayer gives us a peaceful life.

Our meditation gives us a beautiful heart.

I PRAY, I MEDITATE

I pray. Why do I pray? I pray because I need God. I meditate. Why do I meditate? I meditate because God needs me.

When I pray, I think that God is high above me, above my head. When I meditate, I feel that God is deep inside me, inside my heart.

Prayer says, “I am helpless, I am impure, I am weak. I need You, O Lord Supreme, to strengthen me, to purify me, to illumine me, to perfect me, to immortalise me. I need You, O Lord Supreme.”

Meditation says, “Lord Supreme, out of Your infinite bounty You have chosen me to be Your instrument to manifest You here on earth in Your own way. You could have chosen somebody else to play the role, but You have granted me the golden opportunity. To You I offer my constant gratitude, my gratitude-heart.”

Prayer is purity. It purifies the mind, which is always subject to doubt, fear, worry and anxiety, and is always assailed by wrong thoughts and wrong movements. When we pray, purification takes place in our minds, and purity increases our God-receptivity. In fact, purity is nothing short of God-receptivity. Each time we pray, our inner receptacle becomes large, larger, largest. Then purity, beauty, light and delight can enter into that receptacle and sport together in the inmost recesses of our heart.

Meditation is luminosity. It illumines our heart. When illumination takes place in our heart, insecurity and the sense of want disappear. At that time we sing the song of inseparable oneness with the Universal Consciousness and Transcendental Consciousness. When our heart is illumined, the finite in us enters into the Infinite and becomes the Infinite itself. The bondage of millennia leaves us, and the freedom of infinite Truth and Light welcomes us.

Prayer says to God, “Beloved Supreme, You are mine. I claim You as my own, very own. Do grant me Your divine qualities in boundless measure so that I can be Your perfect instrument here on earth.”

Meditation says to God, “O Beloved Supreme, I am Yours. You can utilise me at Your sweet Will at every moment, throughout Eternity. Through me fulfil Yourself here on earth and there in Heaven.”

Prayer is something absolutely intense and upward-soaring. When we pray, we feel that our existence is a one-pointed flame soaring upward. From the soles of our feet to the crown of our head, our whole being is invoking and calling upwards. The very nature of prayer is to reach God by going up.

Meditation is something wide and vast that ultimately expands into the Infinite. When we meditate, we throw ourselves into a vast expanse, into an infinite sea of peace and bliss, or we welcome the infinite Vast into us. Prayer rises; meditation spreads. Meditation is constantly growing and expanding into peace, light and delight. When we meditate, we gradually see, feel and grow into the entire universe of light and delight.

Thy Will be done

When we pray, often there is a subtle desire for something, a hankering to get something or to become something. We may call it aspiration because we are praying to become good, or to have something divine which we do not have, or to be free from fear, jealousy, doubt and so forth. But there is always a subtle tendency on our part to push or pull from within.

Also, there is always the feeling of being—let us use the term ‘a divine beggar’. We feel that God is high above, while we are down below. We see a yawning gulf between His existence and ours. We are looking up at Him and crying to Him, but we do not know when or to what extent God is going to fulfil our prayers. We feel that we are helpless. We just ask, and then we wait for one drop, two drops or three drops of compassion, light or peace to descend upon us. Sometimes there is a feeling of give-and-take. We say, “Lord, I am giving You my prayer, so now You please do something for me. You please help me, save me, fulfil me.”

But in meditation we do not ask God for any help, boon or divine quality; we just enter into the sea of His Reality. At that time God gives us more than we could ever imagine. In prayer we feel that we have nothing and God has everything. In meditation we know that whatever God has, either we also have or we will someday have. We feel that whatever God is, we also are, only we have not yet brought our divinity forward. When we pray, we ask God for what we want. But when we meditate, God showers on us everything that we need. We see and feel that the whole universe is at our disposal. Heaven and earth do not belong to someone else; they are our own reality.

The highest prayer is, “Let Thy Will be done.” This is absolutely the highest reach of prayer, and it is also the beginning of meditation. Where prayer stops its journey, meditation begins. In meditation we say nothing, we think nothing, we want nothing. In the meditation-world the Supreme is acting in and through us for His own fulfilment. The prayer-world is always asking for something. But the meditation-world says, “God is not blind or deaf. He knows what He has to do to fulfil Himself in and through me. So I shall just grow into the highest in soulful silence.”

Two roads to realisation

Prayer and meditation are like two roads. Prayer is always for our own sake, for our own life, for the near and dear ones in our own small world. If we pray well, God will give us two wings to fly above. But meditation is for the entire world. When we meditate well, we feel our oneness with our own expanded reality. If we can follow the road of meditation, we are hero-warriors. At that time we can carry on our giant shoulders the entire burden of humanity. When we fulfil our meditation-life, we fulfil not only God but also ourselves and the entire world.

For those who want to realise the Highest, I always say that meditation is of paramount importance. But there have been saints in the West who have realised God through prayer only. They did not know the concept of meditation. But the intensity of their prayers and their aspiration carried them into the world of meditation and beyond. Both approaches are effective. When we pray, we go up to God; when we meditate, God comes down to us. Ultimately the result can be the same.

The necessity of prayer

If one becomes advanced in meditation, prayer is not necessary. At that time we will realise that God always knows our needs and cares for us infinitely more than we care for ourselves. Prayer is not necessary, because we belong to God and are His property. When we renounce our personal claims and surrender ourselves completely, at that time God claims us as His very own and makes us His chosen instruments.

But until we become very advanced in the spiritual life and feel our oneness with God, prayer is necessary. If we get something through prayer, we can tell the world, “I prayed for it; that’s why I got it. Look, I have this kind of closeness with my Father!” We are like children who are hungry. We ask our mother for food, and she feeds us. Yes, she would have fed us on her own, but the fact that we ask for food and our mother listens to our request gives us joy. It convinces our minds that she really cares for us. Because of our inner connection and closeness with our mother, we can ask her for whatever we want.

God could do everything for us unconditionally, but this would not give us the same kind of satisfaction. In a race, if you run the whole course, then you will be delighted if you receive a trophy. You ran very fast and finished with so much trouble, and you feel that you have earned the trophy. But if somebody who has just been a spectator gets a trophy, that person will not feel satisfied, because he has done nothing to earn it. God can give everything unconditionally, but we get more satisfaction if He gives us something after we have prayed for it or worked for it.

We have to know, however, that when we pray we feel that we as individuals are separated from God. We feel that He is at one place and we are somewhere else. At that time we are not in our highest consciousness where we feel that we are one with God. If we feel that we and God are one, then the question of prayer does not arise, for at that time our needs are His needs.

Prayer, we can say, intensifies our intimacy with the Supreme, whereas meditation increases our oneness with the Supreme. First we have to feel that we and God are intimate friends; then we can realise our oneness-reality with God. Before we meditate, if we can pray for a few minutes, we can develop our intimate connection with the Supreme. Then we can meditate to become one with Him.

In the highest spiritual life there is no comparison between meditation and prayer. Meditation is infinitely deeper and wider than prayer. In the West, prayer is used by seekers with considerable efficacy. But a real seeker who wants to go to the Ultimate Beyond must feel that meditation is the higher rung in the ladder to God-realisation. When we meditate, we see, feel and grow into the entire universe of light and delight.

Q&A

Question: I would like to know whether I should pray for something I want or whether I should just pray for God’s Will to be done.

Sri Chinmoy: To pray for God’s Will to be done is the highest form of prayer. But a beginner finds it almost impossible to pray to God sincerely to fulfil him in God’s own way. So when the seeker is just starting out, it is advisable for him to pray to God for whatever he feels he needs most, whether it is patience, purity, sincerity, humility, peace and so forth. Then God will give the seeker a little peace, light and bliss, which are the precursors of something infinite that is going to come into his inner being. Once the seeker has received some peace, light and bliss and they have become established to some extent in his inner being, at that time he will have some confidence in God’s operation and also in his own life of aspiration.

When one is making very fast progress or is a little advanced, he feels that there is some reality within himself and that this reality is not going to disappoint or desert him. Then he feels that God is fully aware of what he desperately needs and is eager to supply him with those things. When a seeker feels this kind of confidence within him, that is the time for the seeker to pray, “Let Thy Will be done.” At that time he can sincerely say, “God, I want to please You only in Your own way.”

Question: How can we pray effectively?

Sri Chinmoy: To pray most effectively, your prayer should be outwardly inaudible, but you may form a sentence of a few words that will convince your aspiring mind. The heart is already aspiring, but the mind needs to aspire. So it is better for the prayer to take the form of words.

You may form the sentence by writing it on the tablet of your heart. Then try to see it there. Once the words are written, you can return many times to see them. If you want to repeat the sentence, good, but it is not necessary. When you repeat your prayer you have a choice. Either write it once on the tablet of your heart and read it again and again, or continuously write the same thing—whichever gives you more joy.

Question: How can we make our prayer most intense?

Sri Chinmoy: You can make your prayer most intense by using your gratitude-heart. While you are praying, you should feel that the prayer is coming from your heart, and you have to feed the prayer with gratitude. If you do not nourish the prayer with your gratitude-heart, then your prayer will not be intense. Nothing divine will be intense unless and until you are grateful to the Supreme. At every moment your gratitude-heart must feed your inner cry. This will intensify your prayer, your aspiration, your dedication and all your spiritual qualities.

Question: What is the best way to pray for others?

Sri Chinmoy: First, before you even start praying, you should invoke the presence of the Supreme. When you invoke His presence, He will definitely come in a subtle form. You will not see Him in a human body, but you will be able to feel His presence. Inside God’s presence, try to see and feel the person for whom you are praying. If you can invoke the Supreme’s presence and feel inside His presence those for whom you are praying, that will be the most effective way of helping them through your prayer.

But before asking the Supreme through your prayer to help someone, first ask Him whether you are supposed to pray for that particular person. If you get a message or inner feeling that you should pray for that particular person, only then should you do it. Suppose somebody is very sick and you want to pray to God to cure him. You have to know that perhaps God wants him to have this experience right now for his own inner development. You have to know that God has infinitely more love for that particular person than you or any other human being could possibly have. If you ask God to cure him, you may only be opposing God’s Will. But if you pray for oneness with God’s Will, then God may say, “You have become one with My Will. Now I will be happy if you ask me to cure the person.”

Question: Do you pray sometimes?

Sri Chinmoy: To be quite frank with you, I do not pray; nor do I have any need for meditation, although I do meditate. After one has realised the Highest and become consciously one with the Absolute Supreme, one has no need to pray or meditate. But I have a number of disciples, so I meditate for them as I used to meditate for myself many years ago. When I meditate on them, prayer is automatically there because, in trying to help them in their spiritual awakening, I am invoking God’s infinite blessings, light and compassion to offer to them.

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They say that prayer is the daughter of suffering. But I say that prayer is the mother of delight.

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The best definition of prayer is to practise it daily. The best definition of meditation is to experience it soulfully. The best definition of yoga is to live it sincerely. The best definition of God is to love Him, and Him only, unconditionally.

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What my prayer needs is a patience-tree. What my meditation needs is a gratitude-flower.

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Prayer is best expressed in my day-to-day life when my prayer has become a spontaneous, self-giving surrender to the Will of God.

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When I pray, I kneel down devotedly and secretly. When I meditate, I lift up my heart soulfully and perfectly.